We try to keep “upcoming release” information quiet here at Shirt Pocket, or at least relatively so, until we’re close to releasing new a version. The last thing we want to do is frustrate our users by announcing something and then not shipping.

But, let’s pull back the curtain a bit on the next release of SuperDuper!

As you might (or might not) expect, Bruce and I have been working on v2.0 for months. We’re working hard to achieve two main things:

  • Improve the user experience even more
  • Add scheduling

There have been a ton of changes to the way SuperDuper! works internally, each of which ties into these two goals.

I’d like to show you one example of what we’ve done, both to whet your appetite for what’s coming, and to show you how we approach changes. (If you enjoy this post, let me know and I’ll do the same for other new features, too.)

So, let’s start with…

The Status View

It’s not commented on a lot by our users, but the SuperDuper! status view—what’s displayed while the backup is going on—is a model of not-very-good design. Sorry to everyone who’s had to deal with it up to now, but there’s a happy ending, so read on!

While the existing status view gives basic information about what’s going on, it’s not nearly as helpful as the “What’s going to happen?” section of the UI that appears elsewhere in the UI. And it’s pretty ugly. And what’s up with those two progress bars? And, hey—I know it was successful and all—but what happened while I was away from the computer?

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

For background, SuperDuper’s UI is specifically designed to be as unambiguous as possible. I’m really careful to not use generic placeholders like “source” or “target”. I try to avoid some of the “conventional” backup terminology like “incremental” or “differential” because they tend to confuse and obscure what’s really going on. We try to cut our features to the bone to make sure the product isn’t overwhelming.

The idea is that I’m really trying to eliminate the worry that surrounds the backup process—that “Am I doing this right?” feeling that makes you not want to back up, or not be confident in the result.

SuperDuper’s simple UI, stripped down functionality, and “What’s going to happen?” section does this, as does its rapid and accurate operation. So, the question was: how do I carry that same feel through?

The first thing I thought of was: well, the “What’s going to happen?” part of the UI was pretty successful, so why not just do that? You could kind of “bold” each part of the description and turn it different colors as it went through… but, no.

Yes, the WGTH? section is reassuring and very popular with users. It’s a narrative of your choices. That’s very helpful when you need the “expert” pointing out what exactly you’re going to accomplish when you hit the button. But, once you’ve told SuperDuper to go and do the backup, you’re basically entering “Computer World”, where things are far more linear, structured and concise. Trying to shoehorn that into a paragraph just would not work.

Instead, I felt it needed to tell you things in a different voice—still helpful, of course, but more “mechanical”.

After thinking about it for quite a while, I settled on an approach based on a classic speechwriter’s maxim: first, you tell the audience what you’re going to tell them. Then, you tell it to them. Finally, you tell them what you told them.

And so, after a lot of prototypes:

that’s what I did:

This is a real shot of a recent build of SuperDuper! v2.0, running an actual backup. I’ve broken the backup into different major “Phases”, each of which has a bar. A phase is grey when pending, blue when currently in progress, green and checked if successful, and red with an X if it failed (not shown).

Each phase has a number of steps, and each step changes to show whether it’s pending, current, successful or failed as well. The wording of the step changes, too, following the maxim: going to do it, doing it, done!

Everything follows our ‘no placeholder’ policy, and tells you exactly what drive it’s operating on, and what it’s doing. We’re also giving significantly more information about the process of copying (and will likely provide even more in the final version).

So, in the end, it seems pretty simple, and I think it feels pretty great in use. (The static picture here doesn’t show you the nice compositing Bruce does as the steps complete, nor the way that a step automatically expands when there’s more info to show, but you’ll see all that soon enough.)

What do you think?